Spontaneous Trip to Beppu

I jumped on the bullet train to visit Hell and a Beppu Onsen.

Dear Jane,

I convinced Japanese Caleb to join me in Hiroshima for the weekend, before heading off to Miyajima (I’ll write to you about that next), and then to Shikoku, Caleb’s homestead. At the very last minute, Caleb learned that he had to work the school festival, so he was late arriving to Hiroshima by a day. We had a mild moment of panic when trying to figure out how I’d check in without him because he reserved the room. The solution was that Caleb noticed he could book the same room under my name for less than what we’d originally booked it for, and the original booking had free cancelation.

So I had a whole day in Hiroshima without Caleb. In the spur of the moment, and in a desire to stay true to our plans of experiencing Hiroshima together, I hopped on the bullet train to Kyushu, which is one of the four big islands, and home to Nagasaki.

My destination for the day was Beppu, the hot spring capital of Japan. It has the most natural hot springs per capita in Japan but is still relatively off the main tourist path. Lonely Planet’s Experience Japan does mention it, and it has appeared in a couple of YouTube videos, so I’m sure it’ll be a hotspot in no time.

I took the shinkansen to Fukuoka, which is the largest city in Kyushu, and from there, I got on a regional rapid express train called Sonic. And would you believe me if I said the train was blue, because it is.

The Sonic weaved back and forth from the coast to inland rice paddies. There were many beautiful white cranes snacking in the paddies, and I enjoyed each scenic view this ride offered me. The train dropped me off at JR Beppu, and from there, I hopped on a two-car commuter train that took me one station back to Beppudaigaku station. This train reminded me of the one from Spirited Away.

Beppudaigaku station is so small that there aren’t any ticket gates. There’s a single ticket machine that you can tap your IC card on or feed cash into. And then there’s a little collection box that resembles a post box that everyone tossed their tickets into in good faith. I panicked because there wasn’t anywhere for me to scan my JR Pass. After a few minutes of checking for something to prove I wasn’t a thief, I gave up and left.

Beppu is Hell

The city is nestled between some mist-topped mountains and the sea, and they have a small tourist area up the mountainside a bit, featuring probably the most fun “tourist trap” I’ve encountered: The Hells of Beppu. In line with this theme, Beppu has a lot of demon themed signage throughout the city.

While I was on the shinkansen, I researched Beppu and procured a ticket and snack for Kamado Jigoku, one of the seven pools of Hell. You can buy a ticket that allows entry into all seven, but they are spread out, and I was going to be traveling by foot while there.

My phone played tricks on me again. On the shinkansen, the walk from Beppudaigaku station to Kamado Jigoku was a mere 30 minutes. When I got off the train, it was suddenly 45 minutes, and when I’d walked 20 minutes up the mountain, it was still 40 minutes. In the end, I stopped consulting my phone, and the walk took much longer because Beppu was such an interesting place to be in.

The city really loves to share its hot springs. I encountered a couple of free public foot and hand baths and took some breaks to enjoy them.

As you can imagine, water runs down from the mountains to the sea. In Beppu, that water is steaming. Even in the summer heat. Beppu was slightly cooler than the other parts of Japan I’d visited, peaking in the mid-80s F versus the high 90s. Even with the air that hot, the water still steamed in some places as it sped down to the sea.

The higher I got up the mountain, the more I was reminded of Spirited Away. The area did turn very touristy, but it was charming and quaint, not yet ruined by mass tourism. Most of the buildings were ryokan, onsen, and restaurants, and they all had multiple steam chimneys poking out of them in every odd direction. I also passed the Michelin Three-Star onsen.

There were street vendors selling jigoku mushi (hell-steamed) foods, which is a traditional style of cooking in Beppu, and it was the theme of the hell-pool hot spring I was going to visit.

Kamado Jigoku is the Cooking Pot (Kamado) Hell (Jigoku). The park itself is very small but contains a few different hot springs. The water here is primarily comprised of silica, and it’s a bright electric blue color, though the color can change depending on the time of year. Each of the hell pools is a different color because the main mineral in the water is different in each pool.

The snack bar at Kamado Jigoku sold steamed and hot spring boiled food. My ticket came with a hot spring hard-boiled egg. It wasn’t black like the ones you can get in Hakone, but it was tasty and didn’t have a sulfur smell. And I felt like I was living my best Harvest Moon: Back to Nature life.

In fact, nothing smelled like eggs at Kamado Jigoku. Silica doesn’t have a particular smell or taste that I noticed. There was an opportunity to sample the 80° C spring water for just ¥10, and I’m adventurous enough to ingest a mineral that I associate with glass and cooking equipment. I can’t describe the taste, but it wasn’t bad.

Dr. Google has informed me that silica can be consumed at a safe level for some nice health benefits, mostly pertaining to your skin. But if you overdo it, you can look forward to a number of ailments, including kidney failure.

After finishing my egg, I steamed my face and took another foot bath to prepare for my journey down the mountain. I had to head back to downtown Beppu to make sure I got back on the Sonic in time to catch a shinkansen.

On the way down, I stopped at a cute café for what I thought would be my first real meal of the day. I ended up ordering a mango shaved ice, which was a large plate of ice with some mango on top. I’d thought it would just have flavored syrup. In the end, it would be a good hydration choice for me.

Facing those naked in public nightmares, in real life.

While I slowly consumed my ice, I researched where I should go in downtown Beppu. You can’t come to an onsen town and not go to an onsen, even if you are scared of being naked in public in a group of people where you’re the one who stands out.

I read a lot of reviews and ultimately settled on Takegawara Onsen, the oldest onsen in Beppu. Besides the historic significance, Takegawara is the only onsen near the JR station that offered the opportunity to experience a sand bath.

The Sand Bath

The underground hot springs in Beppu heat the ground, and so the locals created sand bath facilities. Sand baths involve laying in a ditch of hot earth and then being buried in the sand that made way for your person. Takegawara doesn’t allow advanced reservations for sand bathing, so you have to get lucky when you arrive or be willing to wait. I got lucky.

Takegawara offers a sand bath ticket for ¥1,500, which includes access to the regular bath. The ticket for the regular bath is ¥300. They offer coin lockers and other amenities for smaller fees.

The building is sectioned off into three main areas. You enter in the center, which is where reception is, and acts as a lounge room. To the right are the baths, divided into separate rooms for men and women, and to the left is the sand bath. There are gendered locker rooms where you change into yukata provided by Takegawara.

You experience the sand bath in the yukata. I’m not sure if you wear this for sanitary reasons or because the sand bath is mutligendered. Historically, public baths in Japan were not gender segregated. In any case, the yukata does not prevent hot sand from creeping its way into the regularly less sandy parts of your body.

So here, in the sand bath locker room, I got naked in front of strangers for the first time. I faced the wall and put my yukata on, and panicked a bit because I realized I only had the robe part and not the sash to keep it closed. The other ladies smiled knowingly at me, and then one of them produced a sash out of nowhere and reached around me to secure it to my body.

The sand bath is a large steamy room with an earth floor. Two bath attendants with shovels direct you to your ditch, adjust it based on your height, and then instruct you to lay in it. The room is hot, and the ground is hotter. I forgot that sand was heavy, and that took me by surprise as I was buried in it.

The receptionist had had me sign off that I didn’t have any heart issues, and I wondered if I did while I lay there. (I don’t, to my knowledge.) Sometimes, I feel faint if I take a hot shower in the summer, and I wondered if I would here. This sand gave the air in Tokyo and Kyoto a run for its money. I was sweating profusely.

Don’t worry, I didn’t faint.

After 15 minutes, the attendants told us we were done and to sit up. The sand had been so heavy, I was surprised how easy it was to just get up.

I joined the other sand bathers in returning to the locker room to bathe and rinse the sand from the yukata. The others were quick to jump into the small pool in the room and start lathering up. I was consumed by both my self consciousness and confusion on how to hand wash a yukata. There wasn’t any previous indication if there was a rule for if they can go in the bath or what, so I had to watch the other women, which was also uncomfortable for me. Watching nude strangers is not a regular habit of mine.

The Bath Bath

I made my way across the bath house to the women’s locker room, where I turned myself into an embarrassing fool. The entrance to the locker room is an archway with a curtain covering half of it vertically. That’s literally all that separates naked people from the general public, and I wasn’t prepared for that.

Immediately after crossing threshold, I was a foot away from a very elderly and very nude Japanese lady. And I gasped and immediately left. I felt so ashamed of how I might have made her feel, and a little reluctant that my face was already red from baking in the ground and no one would know how ashamed I felt.

I gave myself a second and then made direct eye contact with the floor when I reentered the bath/locker room. Most of the ladies in there were finishing up their baths and preparing to leave, so I felt a little relieved.

My clothes were tucked away in a cubby, and I descended the steps down to the actual bath. I washed myself in scalding water, then got into the bath.

In most of the Google reviews of the onsens in Beppu, there’s a pretty distinct divide between bath temperature opinions. Locals think the water is lukewarm, and everyone else says it’s too hot.

My face contorted in response to the water, and a kind woman across the bath from me laughed and then guided me to a spigot on the wall. It dispensed cold water, and she indicated that I should leave it on and sit next to it. I did. It did not change the temperature of the bath water. After about 5 minutes, I had to end my first hot spring bathing experience.

With some time to kill, I sat in the main room of the building to cool down. There was a really nice community feel. A lot of people were hanging out after their baths or waiting for their sand bath slot. There was a large table with many seats around it in front of some vending machines. The most popular was the one that dispensed milk in glass bottles.

I sat next to the manga library but watched baseball on a small TV next to it because I couldn’t read them. The Hiroshima Carps were playing the Hanshin Tigers. I think the Carps were winning, but I’ve heard the Tigers are a big deal.

Back to Hiroshima

Upon leaving Takegawara, I made my way to a nearby mall, hoping I could grab an interesting meal from the food court. There were long lines, so I stopped at a Lawson instead.

Before doing that, I went up to the roof, a happy accident from looking for more food. The roof is a parking lot with spectacular views of Beppu, the surrounding mountains, and the sea. I highly recommend finding the escalators and riding them all the way up if you ever find yourself in this mall.

Then, I was back on the Sonic to meet Caleb at Hiroshima station.

<3 Katherine

PS – I again highly recommend checking out Studio Ghibli’s Spirited Away. There was another attraction in Beppu that I didn’t experience and don’t think I would enjoy: a steam bath. Read these Google translated reviews of the steam bath next to the café where I had my shaved ice. The newer reviews have a much nicer description of the process than the ones I read, which are the ones I linked for you.

PPS – Coincidentally I’ve learned a bit more about fainting since writing this. I’m currently reading Mara Altman’s Gross Anatomy, and she has a whole chapter on fainting. The short of it is that you faint when your brain isn’t or thinks it isn’t getting enough blood. The purpose of fainting is to (hopefully) fall into a horizontal position that allows the body to get blood to the brain easier and quicker. So, I probably wouldn’t have fainted in the sand bath.

PPPS – As of December 7, 2023 the Lonely Planet Experience Japan link is now an affiliate link. This means clicking on the link will enable cookies for 30 days. If you buy something from Lonely Planet’s website within those 30 days, I will make a small commission. It also automatically adds a 10% discount to your shopping cart!